A Tale of Two Technologies...

Optimism about NFTs and worry about Artificial Intelligence

The Best of Times

Almost as soon as the personal computer became attainable, people began making art with it, with early innovations put right into the hands of Andy Warhol and Keith Haring. Since then, as the internet became a cultural center, digital art from fine expressions to memes, proliferated. Many profited, but there was always a problem of infinite duplications and ownership.

The blockchain, a secure and unalterable ledger of ownership, created an opportunity for digital art to have provenance, just like physical art. On the block chain, ownership can be traced from creator to buyer and from resellers to new owners. Art can now be ratified as NFT (non-fungible tokens) and originals could be distinguished from prints and replicas. In 2024, if you want to own the actual portrait of Debbie Harry that Warhol “painted” on a Commodore 1000 in 1985, you can, and you can prove that you bought it from the Warhol Foundation with a reliable blockchain record. The image may be floating around the web, but you alone will own Warhol’s mouse clicks and keystrokes. That’s special.

Christie’s auction house recently celebrated the publication of the comprehensive book, published by Taschen, On NFTs, by artist and curator Robert Alice. The progressive auction house will follow with a blockchain auction of Alice’s work. During a panel discussion debuting the On NFTs, Alice explained how he managed to select material to fill 750 pages of digital art in a world where the barriers to creation and distribution are low, but the bar to earn attention is high.

Alice identified a group of prominent digital artists working on the blockchain and asked them for recommendations about overlooked talents. He then surveyed that cohort for recommendations of other missed creatives, and in that way reverse engineered a funnel of talent that gave him thousands of auditions from which to cast his book. Shortly, he built an art community the old fashioned way by gathering interested people together and asking them to fill him in on the rest. It could have (and did) happened with the Beats at City Lights in San Francisco or Kettle of Fish in New York.

Even in a world of instant communication and digital distribution, Alice found a way to make community matter. Art, whether it’s digital or physical, draws its value from community. The medium doesn’t change that. Alice’s story is ultimately optimistic and finally convinced The Middlebrow that NFTs matter.

The Worst of Times

As I waited for the Christie’s event to begin, I read the final pages of “The Coming Wave” on my Kindle app. It’s written by Mustafa Suleyman, one of the founders of DeepMind, an artificial intelligence company that was purchased by Google and is being used now to power its Gemini AI product. Suleyman argues that the concurrent developments of AI and gene editing represent an unstoppable technological wave that will alter society and eventually threaten humanity.

“Ultimately, human beings may no longer be the primary planetary drivers, as we have become accustomed to being,” he writes.

A few lines later, he says:

“We are going to live in an epoch when the majority of our daily interactions are not with other people but with AIs. This might sound intriguing or horrifying or absurd, but it is happening.”

AIs will proliferate through the government and corporations. We will not be asked whether we prefer to deal with a human when trying to acquire vital services. We will slowly “choose” AI options as those capabilities improve, even if we are resistant, because we will not be given a real choice.

Suleyman argues for “containment” of AI and gene editing. They can’t and shouldn’t be stopped, he says, because technological stagnation is its own dystopia. But, these technologies can be slowed down by government.

One thing he suggests, which seems so reasonable on the surface, is that developers unleashing AIs on the public should have to be licensed, agreeing to limitations to obtain and keep those licenses, the same way we all agree to follow road rules in exchange for a license to drive a car.

Bur a licensing scheme like this greatly favors entrenched AI companies like OpenAI (partnered with Microsoft) and Google (owner of the author’s DeepMind). Those companies have the means and influence to obtain licenses and to help decide on their requirements. A licensing requirement is a costly barrier to entry that favors companies either already in the game or funded by people who sold their companies to Google, like Suleyman. Ultimately, the licensing requirement is a barrier to their competition, even as their AI disrupts other parts of our economy. It’s self-serving, at best, and it also invites the government to regulate speech and expression in the name of regulating AI.

“Some measure of anti-proliferation is necessary,” Suleyman writes. “And, yes, let’s not shy away from the facts: that means real censorship, possibly well beyond national borders.”

It seems like the “ESG” style push from corporations to get us to “responsible” AI is just yet another ruse to use the language of corporate social responsibility to cement corporate power. Not for nothing, but Thomson Reuters, a major news and information organization, says it has an $8 billion war chest ready to acquire AI companies that can serve its mission. These folks are buying in now and you can bet they’ll be demanding regulation to keep their future competitors at bay.

AI is already here, and has been. Heck, Clippy was AI.

=AI.

But here’s the contrast for you: If NFTs support art and community, that seems the best of times. If AI challenges human rights and autonomy, particularly in soft ways where we perceive following the guidance of machines and regulating our own thoughts and speech in their service as choices, then that, my friends, is the worst of times.